By LuckyJimm

So, the last binge!  Last week I decided to give up drinking, but not yet.  First, a week in Edinburgh in which I'd drink every day, and see where that left me.  I took the train up on Friday.  After a long difficult cigaratte-less journey, my friend took me to the pub for a quick pint.   He's a musician so has ready access to a busy social world of gigs and parties, and there's always someone to have a drink with.

We went on to the Drill Hall for a night of acoustic performances and drank a bottle each of undrinkable Sicilian red. I fell in love with a young very short-haired dancer, though of course we didn't speak.  Someone handed round fortune cookies with customised messages.  Mine told me to text a secret to a certain mobile phone number.  I did so and my secret was a Smiths lyric.   Afterwards we went to another pub, and then on to the Liquid Room club, by which point I seemed to be drinking bitter.  I was talking at length to random non-threatening people, i.e. dull blokes.  At 4am we were in the queue outside Maxim's Casino since some girl my friend had got talking to wanted to go in.  But thankfully we just went home.

By lunchtime Saturday we were drinking wine in a small private members club listening to an old man playing the piano, about whom more later.  Back in the flat we drank lager and had a meal.  That night we went to a Balkan Ceilidh held in a school hall.  The only drink left was seaweed ale.  Lacking the gaiety of the crowd, I sat glumly in the corner and looked on in detachment at their merry dancing. Yes, I was in hell!  Some girl asked what I did for a living and, since I don't do anything else, I said I wrote and played poker.  She said she played a little herself - but just £5 / £10 games.  Wow!  Oh, she meant the buy-in, not the blinds.

We went on to a very busy house party held in a squat-like windowless building in the town centre.  The occupants were holding the party to pay their electricity bill.  They rented the front room out to bands as a rehearsal space, and the walls were crudely painted brick.  A band played and there was loud jungle, garage and techno music, while people crushed around sofas next door and in the corridor.  The crowd seemed to be Scottish musicians, hippies and hipsters, and Polish, Italian and Spanish language students.  I drank little bottles of beer which they were selling.  I found myself talking to a very drunk Neapolitan, who - as so often happens with people from that city - insisted that I come and stay with his family next time I'm there.  His face was a twitch of Neapolitan facial expressions, for example this way they have of using their face to shrug their shoulders.  I didn't talk to any girls, except briefly to one impossibly cute and dead drunk Spanish girl outside.  But instead of feeling happily drunk, I just felt sad.  We left at 4am though the party will have continued much longer.

Sunday was a quiet day.  We had a quick four pints in a pub in town, and the electrician at the next table joined us.  Edinburgh seems friendlier than London, and it's easier to get talking to random people.  Maybe it's just that everyone is so drunk.  We went back home and had a Sunday roast and two bottles of St Emilion, but didn't go out again.

I don't recall what happened on Monday.  On Tuesday I met up with a guy I've got to know through 2+2, the chap who's staked me in the past.  He got the train over from Dundee.  I had a pint while I was waiting for him, and then a quick five more.  I soon realised he could drink and smoke much faster than I could.  We got on famously, with our shared mutual endeavour of rapid intoxication.  When he went home, I had another pint then met up with my friend, and we spent the evening drinking the rest of a bottle of gin we'd started the other day and watching Ezra Pound and other cheery videos on Youtube.

My friend spent Wednesday practicising on the piano since he had a gig at the Jazz Bar that evening.  To my terror he wanted me to come on stage and read something out to piano accompaniment. Realising this was my last day of drinking, I went to the supermarket and bought wild mushrooms, olives, cherry tomatoes, red and yellow peppers, parmesan, fresh basil, olive oil, mozzarella and Di Cecco pasta to make us a good meal; and three bottles of St Emilion to wash it down.  I had the first while I was cooking, and the second while we were eating and preparing to go out.  At the club I had a double vodka lemonade.  My head was on the table for about twenty minutes, apparently, but fortunately I was roused in time to take the stage and read my piece.

I came up with this, which I'd read to Tom Waits' The Piano Has Been Drinking.  It's a description of the guy I'd met days earlier, but my friend is worried it'll be his fate, too.  And of course with modifications it could be mine, too:

"This is a lament for an ageing piano player soon to fall silent.

I saw him perform one afternoon in an almost empty private member's club, applauded by a monocled, bearded, bow-tied regular whilst another couple talked amongst themselves. The club pays him with a meal and whatever he can drink. He plays with a beauty beyond the indifferent room.

I shook his soft, kind hands, and watched him swigging wine between songs. His smartest clothes were somewhat shabby but he had kept a graceful manner. Over another cigarette he talked of the his favourite performers, and of film scores written two score years ago. He never promoted himself, as if it wasn't the done thing. He posted an admirer the only copy of his piano sonatas, and then they lost touch.

He became a teacher but some things he couldn't learn himself, and so life has made decisions for him. He lives alone, his two short marriages annulled, and says solitude suits him. Only the drink stayed faithful. He spends his days drinking rum and writing symphonies, all unperformed."

I'm not musical and wasn't sure how to fit my words with the music, but I got through it without anybody throwing fruit.  I suppose my drunkenness was rather appropriate.  At midnight I took a taxi home while my friend stayed out.  I had the great Scottish delicacy of cheese and chips, and drank the rest of the wine.  I found out later my friend and his pals had gone to the beach - which I didn't even realise existed - with a couple of friendly girls.  Once again, all alcohol does is make me more isolated, makes me miss out on things, and takes me away from myself.  This whole week I wasn't happy - I was just bingeing, whether on food, cigarettes or booze. 

The next day I had far less of a hangover than I deserved.  I went for a fried breakfast and had hoped to be served by the pretty Scottish girl who'd been there the day before, but it was her day off and I was kept talking by the jolly, barrel-chested Polish proprietor whose accent sounded at once Eastern European and Scottish.  I caught a lunchtime train back to London, and loathed the five interminable hour journey.  Why do they have a "customer services manager" on the train annoying us over the tannoy at every stop? Back at Kings Cross I smoked a few quick cigarettes and got a taxi home. 

Within an hour, I was sitting in an AA meeting.